There's one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me and - I'm going to say something presumptuous to repeat myself - I think most respect me.

What I respect as far as in myself and in others is the spirit of just doing it. For better or worse it may work and it may not but I'm going to go for it. Ultimately I probably prefer to be respected for that than whether it works out or not either winning or losing.

Find your self-respect now. Don't dumb yourselves down. Think of yourself as capable and worthy of finding a guy who is going to respect you too. It's so important I mean and the confidence you get from feeling smart and tackling something like mathematics which is a challenge right? Math is hard.

I was just then going through a healthy reaction from the orthodoxy of my youth religion had become for me not so much a possession as an obsession which I was trying to throw off and this iconoclastic tale of an imaginary tribe was the result.

And religion causes most of the problems war and economics of course and study your history or you're going to repeat it and if you're burning a Harry Potter book you need some serious counseling you don't get it you're missing the whole point.

I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need.

Oh there's going to be debate because you're dealing with the Bible and religion is supposed to be separate from state and that to me is already a conflict before it even hits the gay issue.

I am a Westerner. We're not going to change the West by going East. The East has a lot to teach us but essentially it's like a mirror saying hey can't you see what's here in your own religion what are you stupid?

I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.

I am not going to condemn anybody. That's where religion gets a bad name when people get holier than thou. We are all human. If my children make a mistake I want them to know it is all right and they should try harder next time.

As long as there are religions there are going to be people who are hiding their rottenness behind the veil of religion.

You're always going to have extremists in every religion.

I was 21 in 1968 so I'm as much a child of the '60s as is possible to be. In those years the subject of religion had really almost disappeared the idea that religion was going to be a major force in the life of our societies in the West anyway would have seemed absurd in 1968.

I also like to look at the dynamic that takes place between religion and science because in a way both are asking the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? The methodologies are diametrically opposed but their motivation is the same the wellspring is the same in both cases.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

Islam is a violent I was going to say religion but it's not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination. That is the ultimate aim.

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.